Android Application Architecture

1. Content

Big picture
Concepts
Android Studio
Brainstorm on Android MetaModel
Thoughts for your process

Pour ne pas perdre du temps, commencez à lancer l’installation d’Android Studio si ce n’est déjà fait sur vos machines en téléchartgeant au choix depuis :

https://192.168.4.242/share.cgi?ssid=057ZThL (NAS local à l’IUT)
http://bit.ly/jmb-as (Dropbox )
https://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html (officiel)

2. Big Picture

A unique aspect of the Android system design is that any app can start another app’s component.

— Android Developers Fundamentals

2.1. Build

Figure 1. Build of an Android app

2.2. Running

Figure 2. Running of an Android app

2.3. Overall Organization

Figure 3. Basic organization of an Android app

2.4. Interactions

Figure 4. Basic interactions between users and apps

2.5. Set of librairies, resources, etc.

Figure 5. Complex organization of concepts

2.6. Messages

Try to avoid "Hello JMB!":

Bad: using string "hard coded"

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    ...
    <TextView android:text="Hello JMB!" android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content" />
</RelativeLayout>

Figure 6. Rendu du Layout

Use "@string/message" instead:

Bad: using string "hard coded"

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    ...
    <TextView android:text="@string/message" android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content" />
</RelativeLayout>

String.xml

<resources>
    <string name="app_name">My First App</string>
    <string name="action_settings">Settings</string>
    <string name="message">Hello JMB!</string>
</resources>

Figure 7. Rendu du Layout identique

2.7. content_main.xml

content_main.xml is a kind of Layout.

content_main.xml

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" (1)
    ...
    <TextView android:text="@string/message" android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content" />
</RelativeLayout>

1

Test

Blabla 1 blabla.

2.8. Views

A Layout contains components (buttons, etc.) ⇒ Views

Figure 8. content_main.xml

2.9. Intent

Activities communicate through Intent.

In the same app:

Figure 9. Intent in an app

Or between apps:

Figure 10. Intent between apps

3. Android Studio in a minute

3.1. Install

https://192.168.4.242/share.cgi?ssid=057ZThL (NAS local à l’IUT)
http://bit.ly/jmb-as (Dropbox )
https://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html (officiel)

3.2. Create a new Android Studio project

3.3. Configure the project

3.4. Specify the API level

3.5. Create an Activity

3.6. Configure the activity

3.7. First app created!

3.8. Detail of an activity

3.9. Android Virtual Device Manager

3.10. AVD Selection

3.11. AVD Configuration

3.12. AVD Launching

3.13. Navigation Editor

4. Android metamodel

Figure 11. Concepts Android

Check the Android fundamentals, enrich the list of important concepts and organize them.

5. Basic Components

Figure 12. Basic components

6. Excerpt of the MetaModel

Figure 13. Android Metamodel (excerpt, taken from [Velduis2013])

7. Android Activities Lifecycle

Figure 14. Android Activities Lifecycle

8. Organizing you app

List of Activities
- Top Activities
- Cateory activities
- Detail/edit
Navigatin through the activities
App structure
Process:
- define class, resources (images, …), strings
- toplevel / layout
- loop for each activities

Figure 15. Organizing activities

9. Subtilities not covered

Manifest.xml
Fragments
Screen-specific resources
Librairies, themes, styles, etc.
Database connection
Services
Material specifics, ART
Distribution and commercial aspects

Full Android MetaModel

Taken from: https://github.com/markoudev/modeling

Activity

Behavior

Entity

Fragment

Layout

Resources

View

ViewBehavior

References and useful links

References

[gram86] Ana Gram. Raisonner pour programmer. Dunod, 1986.
[HighsmithFowler2001] Jim Highsmith and Martin Fowler. The agile manifesto. Software Development Magazine, 9(8) :29–30, 2001.
[1030005] Kieran Conboy and Brian Fitzgerald. Toward a conceptual framework of agile methods : a study of agility in different disciplines. In WISER ’04 : Proceedings of the 2004 ACM workshop on Interdisciplinary software engineering research, pages 37–44, New York, NY, USA, 2004. ACM.
[Roques2007a] Les Cahiers du Programmeur, UML2, Pascal Roques 3ème Edition, Eyrolles, 2007.
[Roques2007b] UML 2 par la pratique, Pascal Roques 6ème Edition, Eyrolles, 2007.
[Blanc2006] UML pour les développeurs, Xavier Blanc, Eyrolles, 2006.
[Longepe2006] Le projet d’urbanisation du S.I., C. Longépé, 3ème édition, Dunod, 2006.
[Gillet2008] Management des SI, M. & P. Gillet, Dunod, 2008.
[Muller] Modélisation objet avec UML. {pam} & Nathalie Gaetner, Eyrolles, 2003.
[RUP] http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Process
[AndroidFundamentals] http://developer.android.com/guide/components/fundamentals.html

Links

Glossary

Ressources

The following definitions are only informative. You can find usefull other sources here:

https://eduscol.education.fr/sigles/
Glossary from the Software Engineering Institute
IEEE Computer Dictionary Online
Wikipedia –- Version française

ATL: _ATLAS Transformation Language
DRY: Don’t Repeat Yourself
EMF: _Eclipse Modeling Framework
IHM: Interface Homme-Machine
MCF: Modèle Conceptuel des Flux
MCT: Modèle Conceptuel des Traitements
MOA/MOE: Maîtrise d’ouvrage (MOA) Maîtrise d’oeuvre (MOE)
MOF: Modèle Organisationnel des Flux
MOT: Modèle Organisationnel des Traitements
OMG: Object Management Group
PPN: Programme Pédagogique National
SEF: Schéma d'Enchaînement des Fenêtres
SEP: Schéma d'Enchaînement des Pages
SI: Système d'Information
SNI: Schéma de Navigation d'Interfaces
SO: Système Organisationnel
SysML: System Modeling Language ™
TRL: Technology Readiness Level
URL: Universal Ressource Locator

About…

Document generated by Jean-Michel Bruel — bruel@irit.fr via Asciidoctor (version 1.5.3) from Dan Allen. This document is free to use under 'Licence Creative Commons' licence.